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New successes with electrochemical approaches to spinal cord recovery procedures is not isolated. Recently, researchers combined electrical stimulation to the motor area of the brain and the spinal cord below the area of the injury. In addition, drugs were infused into the region of the wounded area to promote healing. The results were dramatic. Paralyzed rats were able to walk and run after severe spinal cord injuries. This research followed last year’s revelation, reported in the Lancet, that a 23 year old paraplegic man regained the ability to stand and walk using a functional electrical stimulation (FES) device.

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is one of the most serious disorders in clinics, and the high disability rate and functional deficits are common issues in patients. Transplantation of bone-marrow-derived mesenchymal stromal cells (BMSCs) into the injured spinal cord is emerging as a novel method in the therapeutics of SCI; however, its application is limited by the poor survival rate of the transplanted cells and low differentiation rate into neurons. Our laboratory recently reported that electrical stimulation (ES) dramatically improves the survival rate of transplanted BMSCs and increases spinal cord functions in animals with spinal cord injury. In this paper, we asked whether implanted electro-acupuncture (iEA) can advance the beneficial effects from the ES treatment in animals with spinal cord injury. We showed that BMSCs transplantation alone resulted in significant functional recovery in animals. Interestingly, iEA with BMSCs treatment induced a significantly higher functional improvement in locomotor functions and SSEP compared to the BMSCs treatment alone. Additionally, we used molecular biology techniques and showed that BMSCs transplantation with iEA treatment significantly increased the number of surviving BMSCs compared to the BMSCs alone group. In conclusion, our experiment showed that the approach of coupling iEA electric stimulation and BMSCs transplantation remarkably promotes functional improvements in animals with spinal cord injury and holds promising potential to treat spinal cord injury in humans.

How can electro-acupuncture be implanted? Electro-acupuncture is performed by inserting needles into body and then conveying electricity to the needles thru wires. After 20-30 min, the needles are taken away from body. Electro-acupuncture is not implantation